You couldn’t trust your ears. Because you heard it all before. And no one is that good. No kid turns his peers into traffic cones, playfully and effortlessly weaving his way to freedom, like a motorcyclist in gridlock. No person can see the future, knowing where a player and puck will be before they begin moving.
You couldn’t trust your eyes. Because the kid was built like a slice of bread, like he needed a layer of bubble wrap beneath his gear. Because he was too small to survive the bruising hits that close any talent gap.
You had to trust your gut. Because hype is nearly halfway to hyperbole. Because the inconceivable is inherently unreliable.
But he was Patrick Kane. America had no such precedent.
“I played against him when I was 12, and we met informally — he probably didn’t know who I was, but I definitely knew who he was,” said Blake Geoffrion, who later played for the Montreal Canadiens and Nashville Predators. “Growing up, you always heard about Patrick Kane of the Buffalo Saints.
“He always had that aura around him of how great a player he was, how sick he was and how he dangled everyone, how he was so small but still so dominant. Just like he is today. Everyone knew this kid was special. We all knew it right away. His talent was just above and beyond anyone else.”
Word spread through Western New York, but it failed to cross Lake Erie. In 2004, 40 players were offered a tryout with the U.S. National Team Development Program in Michigan. Kane, then 16, didn’t receive an invitation.
“I was devastated from that,” Kane told The Post recently.
The coaching staff didn’t realize a scouting blunder was committed. They didn’t know Kane existed.
“A bunch of the team was from New York, and they’re like, ‘Why are you not taking this guy?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’” said then-USNTDP assistant coach Darrin Madeley. “I watched a game, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this kid is incredible.’ They’re saying, ‘He’s too small, he can’t hit,’ and I remember saying to a scout, ‘He doesn’t have to hit. He has the puck the whole game. There’s something different here. This kid’s gonna change us.’
“He would draw everyone and throw these bomb saucer passes. He’d dance around four guys. He wasn’t human. He sees everything that’s going on. He controls the game. Everything slows down. He sees openings that other people don’t. He’s like a chess player. He just thought the game at a different level. “No one will ever be Gretzky, but when it comes to the brain for the game, Patrick’s right at that second level right there of the top players of all time. He comes on the ice, and five guys are terrified. It was like, ‘This is stupid. How do we not have this guy right now?’”
The new Rangers forward may complete the puzzle, like DeBusschere, like Goring, like Carter. He may be the reason you tell your kids and grandkids about this team, this time, this journey.
The quest for the team’s first title since 1994 begins in next week’s first round playoff series. It is why Kane has come here.
It was only three years after being selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NHL Draft that Kane ended the Blackhawks’ 49-year championship drought with an overtime goal and took the Stanley Cup home to South Buffalo, where he brought the trophy to his relatives’ graves and allowed neighbors to eat chicken wings from the silver bowl.
Kane, the eldest of four children, was born to a pair of hockey-loving parents, who were engaged to marry after a game at the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. He was a fixture by the visitors’ bench, the son of Sabres season-ticket holders — Kane’s childhood signature adorned the final steel beam installed in Buffalo’s new arena — who enjoyed intermissions as much as the games.
“He would bring mini-sticks with him and play with them in the hallway between periods,” youth hockey teammate Kevin Montgomery said. “We were 14 and kind of over playing mini-sticks at that age, but he was still like a little kid. Hockey was everything. He wanted to be doing it every second of the day.”
Kane began skating at 6. He picked up a stick at 7. He complained to his mother when his friends didn’t take street hockey games seriously. Parents in the local third grade league complained that Kane scored too frequently, prompting the league to ask him to leave.
So he played up in age. He stayed on the ice long after his team went home. He beat the sun out of bed the next morning.
“I just felt like I was always in my element when I was playing hockey,” Kane said. “As a kid, as a player, as a person, it’s where I felt most comfortable, being on the ice. Things kind of came naturally to me. I definitely worked hard at it, but that’s what I enjoy doing the most. It’s just what I love to do.”
His father has estimated his son played roughly 300 games as a 12-year-old. Patrick Sr.’s flexible schedule, and financial prosperity, as the part-owner of Buffalo’s largest Jeep dealership, allowed his son to spend as much as 350 days of the year on ice.
“He was so into hockey that his dad had him playing on three different teams in the same league, so he’d have three different jerseys in his bag and he’d drive him from one rink to the next,” Montgomery said. “He never had a weekend not playing hockey. There’s a ton of research that says you need to take time off and you should play different sports, but I saw firsthand that hockey was his life and it worked out pretty well for him. It was his passion and what made him happy and what he wanted to do.”
Play continued in Kane’s basement, which featured a small-scale rink with nets and boards. White floor paint imitated ice, and Kane impersonated longtime Sabres play-by-play announcer Rick Jeanneret. Lights flickered for introductions. Stats were written on the wall.
“He hated losing so much,” youth teammate Kyle Verbeek said. “You didn’t get to beat him much, but when you did, you made sure to rub it in his face.”
Winning was everything. Sports. Video games. Whatever. He’d challenge his sisters to handwriting contests. He locked the youngest, Jackie, out of the house after she claimed victory on their backyard basketball court.
“Anything we did, any competition, he had to win or he was very upset,” Geoffrion said. “I used to dominate him in ping-pong and he’d be furious. He’d usually make up some excuse, ‘Oh, you cheated over there. Oh, that didn’t count. That ball wasn’t in.’ It was like, ‘Dude, just take the “L” and move on.’”
Moving on wasn’t easy, but Buffalo wasn’t big enough for its smallest star.
Kane was recruited by Donnie Harkins, coach of the HoneyBaked AAA hockey club near Detroit. The initial pitch came on a handshake line after Kane handed Harkins a loss, and continued for three years, until Kane’s parents allowed their 14-year-old to leave home and live with former NHL All-Star Pat Verbeek, an assistant coach on the HoneyBaked team, which also featured his son, Kyle.
Less than an hour after dropping Kane off in Michigan, his mother, Donna, received a call from her son, who was crying, asking to be taken back home with her. “I told him, ‘Pat, we’re not quitters. We’ve never been quitters. We made a commitment to a team and an organization and a family, and we can’t just walk away without trying it,’” his mother told ESPN in 2009 (Kane’s family declined interview requests for this story). “It was a tough couple of months, but we got through it.”
Looking back, Kyle Verbeek laughs.
“I still give him s–t for it now,” Verbeek said. “I’m pretty sure he called his mom every day. There were times he was homesick, but it was about the opportunity for Pat. His parents were a little reluctant to send their son to a new place at a young age, but they knew, and my dad did as well, there was something special in Pat. It was a lot more exposure for Pat and we had a pretty good team.”
Harkins was hardest on his best player, bringing Kane to tears while berating his play in front of the team. Get the best out of him, get the best out of the team. The HoneyBaked club went 66-3-1 in 2002-03, with Kane posting 83 goals and 77 assists.
“I had all my friends in grammar school that were going to high school [in Buffalo], and friends I played hockey with, and part of you wants to stay back and do that, but my parents and myself thought it was the best thing for my development to do something different and try playing with new players with a really motivating coach,” Kane said. “Got to live with Pat Verbeek, former Ranger, and that was part of it, too. He was a smaller guy, he scored 500 goals in the NHL, and then all of a sudden I’m getting the chance to live with him at 14 years old and pick his brain and talk to him about things.”
Hands-on lessons were part of the curriculum, while sharing a home with someone who racked up nearly 3,000 career penalty minutes.
“The house was competitive, and I would try and test out my strength on my old man, and Kaner and I went after him together, just trying to get him down, and we both lost,” Verbeek said. “My dad treated him like me, like part of the family. It was good for him, being so far away from home, he needed that.
“We all trained together, running hills with sleds, doing agility drills on volleyball courts with sand, and it kind of became impressed upon him that if you want to do this at the highest levels, this is what it takes. You’re 14, you’re gonna pick up and move away from home for hockey, you don’t do that with the mentality that I’ll take a day off.”
Kane could do anything the U.S. National Team Development Program could want — but add five inches and 50 pounds.
“The big hockey player was the thing, and the little skill player was going out of the game [in the early 2000s] because there was much more holding, grabbing, clutching,” Geoffrion said. “It was the program wanting to develop NHL players, thinking we should grab all these big kids and that’s gonna increase the probability of them making the NHL. Kaner didn’t fit that mold. But he had the ability to bring out the best in people and demand people to get on his level. If they didn’t, he’d put the puck in the net himself.”
After the program rectified the snub, Kane recorded 70 points in 63 games with the U-17 team. The next year, Kane notched a then-single-season program record of 102 points in 58 games, and scored an overtime game-winner against the Czech Republic in the semifinals of the 2006 IIHF World U18 Championships, leading to U.S. gold.
“To not even be top 40 in your age group to now being one of the top American players of all time, it’s pretty cool,” Kane said. “Sometimes, things work in mysterious ways.”
Sometimes, things move quicker than the mind can comprehend.
Kane, a fifth-round pick (No. 88 overall) of the London Knights in the 2004 OHL Draft, bypassed college hockey to join the major junior hockey league for the 2006-07 season. He finished with 62 goals and 83 assists in 58 games and was named OHL Rookie of the Year.
“I don’t know if I ever really thought about the NHL until I went to London,” Kane said. “When you’re younger, you’re just kind of dreaming of playing competitive hockey, maybe playing college, looking for a scholarship. In London, I was ranked maybe third round going into that [NHL] draft year. By Christmas, they had me ranked to go first overall.”
They couldn’t trust their ears. No player — certainly no 18-year-old — seemed capable of reviving a franchise among the most maligned in sports, which had won a total of one playoff game in the previous 10 years.
They couldn’t trust their eyes. Because the savior looked like he’d never used a razor. Because his listed height (5-foot-9) and weight (160 pounds) appeared aspirational.
They had to trust their gut, hoping Kane would reach greatness one day. It began on Day 1, when the teenager scored in his NHL debut, against his favorite player (Joe Sakic) from childhood.
Kane eventually became the first American-born player to win the Calder Trophy and Art Ross Trophy. He claimed the Hart Trophy and the Conn Smythe Trophy, raising three Cups and boasting the league’s best-selling jersey.
(This chapter of Kane’s career was also marked by multiple embarrassing off-ice incidents and allegations of misconduct. In 2015, Kane was accused of raping a woman at his home. Following a three-month investigation, the Erie County district attorney declined to bring charges, finding the case “rife with reasonable doubt.”)
After nine straight years reaching the postseason, Kane, 34, has appeared only once in the past five seasons. The Rangers’ upcoming series will mark his first playoff games in front of fans since 2017. He pushed for the February trade, giving him a chance to help end another Original Six title drought, to elevate a legacy already ensured of enshrinement. Like Reggie. Like Messier.
“It’s probably something you think of more after you’re done playing,” said Kane, discussing his legacy.
The opportunity was worth leaving a city (Chicago) where he is beloved, where he had spent the past 16 years. It was worth the potential wrath so many failed superstar imports have endured on Broadway since 1994.
He trusted his gut. He trusts it will all be worth it. “There were moments where I was envious of his confidence,” longtime teammate Jonathan Toews said early this season, “and I wasn’t sure where he got it from sometimes.”